For the past several days, we’ve been in Nashville, TN visiting my family! Brad and Tam both came with me (and Felix, too!). It took us two days to drive up there, as there was a lot of construction on I-40 due to hurricane Helene. In many places half the highway had disappeared as the ground had fallen away, so both directions were on one two lane road with just pylons to separate them and the speed limit was 35 mph!
Tamara drove the first day, and had lots of rain. But she was a great driver and handled it like a champ, even when it was raining so hard we could hardly see.
We stopped overnight in Knoxville, at a hotel we picked specifically so that we could see the World’s Fair Park next door that evening. But it was raining too hard, so we just ordered food in.
The next morning, I finished the drive. We got to the hotel around lunchtime, and had a quick bite to eat made up of leftovers from the free hotel breakfast.
No one else had arrived yet, so we decided to do something fun with just the three of us! We visited the Ole Smokey moonshine distillery! (This blog entry on the tasting is the first of a few entries.) They are pretty famous, and we’ve had their flavored moonshine before and really liked it. We parked in a lot nearby, and Brad got a scene setting shot of Tam holding Felix and me in my wheelchair before we went inside.
So Tam and I did a tasting. We signed up for the tasting that was about to start, and looked at a few items before it happened.
Luckily they had a special lowered part of the bar for me to sit at in my wheelchair, as everyone else had a standing bar to lean up on. I definitely was glad I brought my wheelchair as I could not have stood that long! Brad didn’t taste as he was driving, but we did let him smell the liquor.
They started us out with 9 oz of beer which we were supposed to use to cleanse our palates between thimble sized shots of moonshine. Brad got some good pictures of us at the bar and the beer.
The first shot we did was straight moonshine. Like 100 proof! The bartender warned us that we probably wouldn’t want to sip it, and that we might want to wait until the second item, which was a moonshine pickle, to take the moonshine shot. So we did the moonshine shot, and then ate the pickle right after. I had never done a shot before in my life! I did it pretty well, if I say so myself! The pickle afterwards definitely helped. But the pickle didn’t taste as good as we expected it to. We had been expecting to buy some moonshine pickles, but after that we decided to pass on them.
For a $13 a piece tasting, we got I think about 10 or so different things to try. Some were very good, like the salty watermelon whiskey and the white chocolate strawberry moonshine. Others were not so good. The moonshine pineapple wasn’t very good either, so we decided to pass on buying the moonshine cherries which we had planned to get.
We had also wanted to buy the key lime pie moonshine, but it wasn’t good, either. And then we got to the sour blue raspberry moonshine, which had been one we thought for sure we would get. It was terrible! Just look at the faces I made after drinking that!
They were selling the moonshine and whiskey at a discount if you bought a lot. Originally we thought we’d buy 18 for the price of 15 and get a free wagon to go along with it. But we ended up not liking as many flavors as we thought we would. So we ended up getting 12 for the price of 10, two six packs of mini shots for free, and a free rolling cooler. We ended up with half moonshine and half whiskey. You can see the pictures of us going around the store picking things out! The basket got so heavy, we ended up having to put it on my wheelchair footplate as we couldn’t lift it!
We got two $10 coupons for doing the $13 tastings for Tam and me, and we used one coupon on the alcohol, and another on a mini mug which Tam collects.
It really was the perfect start to our Nashville vacation, a little time for just the three of us to unwind. We ended up with some really neat flavors like banana pudding moonshine, strawberry moonshine, peanut butter moonshine, peanut butter whiskey, cookies and cream whiskey, salty watermelon whiskey, mango habanero whiskey, and so on. I can’t remember all the flavors, but they all seem pretty cool.
We’ve tried a few since then and I LOVE the banana pudding moonshine. I really hope we can find it near us because it will definitely be a staple for me! Tam enjoyed mixing the peanut butter whiskey with the strawberry moonshine to create a peanut butter and jelly situation. Brad so far likes the peanut butter whiskey the best. But of course those are the only things we’ve tried, so we might like other things better.
We got back to the lot just as our parking time expired, then headed to the hotel to meet up with my parents and start the family part of the family vacation. We’ll have more on that in the coming days!